Los Angeles truck accident lawyerTruck hit you? We handle the trucking company.

Key issues in truck accident claims

This page is for people hurt in Los Angeles County by a tractor-trailer, tanker, dump truck, or other heavy truck, and for families of people killed in one. It covers the rules that govern the truck, the companies that can be responsible, the insurance, and the deadlines. It does not cover a truck driver's own workers' compensation claim or damage to freight. If a van, box truck, pickup, or company car hit you, start with our Los Angeles commercial vehicle accident lawyer page, which covers every vehicle driven for a business.

Semi, big rig, 18-wheeler, and tractor-trailer name the same vehicle: a tractor unit pulling a separate trailer. The claim usually runs against companies, under a rulebook a car never touches. From the first day, the trucking company has an insurer, adjusters, and safety staff working on the crash, and the records that decide fault are kept on schedules measured in months.

Truck case differences

Weight comes first. Large trucks often weigh 20 to 30 times as much as passenger vehicles, and their stopping distances are much longer, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

• 5,340People killed in large truck crashes in 2024, nationallyIIHS Fatality Facts 2024
• 62%Of those deaths were occupants of passenger vehiclesIIHS Fatality Facts 2024
• 20 to 30xHow much more a large truck often weighs than a passenger vehicleIIHS
• 10%Share of 2024 vehicle miles traveled by large trucksIIHS, citing FHWA

The deaths are national 2024 figures, not Los Angeles figures. They come from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's Fatality Facts on large trucks and its large trucks page, which reports large trucks at 5 percent of registered vehicles and 10 percent of miles traveled in 2024.

The second difference is the rulebook. A car driver owes ordinary care under Civil Code section 1714. A commercial driver owes that plus driving limits, inspection duties, testing, and a qualification file, each written down with a section number. A rule you can cite is a rule you can prove was broken.

The third difference is who you are suing. A car crash has a driver and a policy. A truck crash can have a driver, a trucking company, a broker, a shipper, a repair shop, and a parts maker, each with its own insurer and its own records.

Trucking company records

A preservation letter, also called a spoliation letter, is a written demand to the trucking company, its insurer, and anyone else holding records. It names each category of evidence and asks that it be kept. Spoliation is the loss of evidence a party knew was relevant, and a court can let a jury hold it against that party.

Each period comes from the current federal text on eCFR: 49 CFR 395.8, 391.51, 396.3, 396.11, and 382.401. California keeps its own retention rules for trucks that stay in the state. The full table, with what exists for vans and box trucks, is in our guide to evidence after a commercial vehicle crash.

Two terms matter there. Records of duty status are the driver's logs, kept on an electronic logging device in most trucks under 49 CFR 395.8(a). The engine control module is the truck's own computer, and it can hold road speed, throttle, and hard-braking events from the seconds before impact. No federal rule sets a retention period for that data, for telematics, or for camera video, so what survives depends on the equipment and the company's settings.

Our guide on what a truck accident lawyer does sets out how a case moves after that letter. Hours of service and driver fatigue covers how log data is matched against fuel receipts and toll records.

Liable parties in a truck crash

The driver is the obvious defendant and rarely the only one. Respondeat superior is the rule making an employer answer for what its employee does within the scope of employment, and jurors get it as Judicial Council of California Civil Jury Instruction No. 3720. Whether it applies depends on who employed the driver and what the driver was doing. The driver has a license. The company has coverage.

Instruction numbers come from the 2026 edition of CACI. Government Code section 835 reaches a public entity only where the condition created a foreseeable risk of that kind of injury and the entity created it or had notice in time to fix it.

Brokers are the newest entry. On May 14, 2026, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court held in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC that federal law does not preempt a claim that a broker negligently hired an unsafe carrier, because it falls within the safety exception of 49 U.S.C. section 14501(c)(2)(A). The Court left open loads brokered entirely within one state. Justice Kavanaugh wrote separately that brokers who act reasonably and use reputable carriers should be able to defend, so the claim still needs proof.

Shippers are less settled. In Casarez v. Irigoyen Farms, Inc. (2025), a California Court of Appeal held that federal law preempted negligence claims against a farm that loaded a truck and a retailer that received the load. A petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to send it back in light of Montgomery, No. 25-1421, is pending.

Expect one defense above all others: the driver was an independent contractor. 49 CFR 376.12(c)(1) requires a truck lease to give the carrier exclusive possession, control, and use of the equipment and complete responsibility for its operation. California also holds a carrier operating under public authority liable to the public for its contractor's negligence, under Serna v. Pettey Leach Trucking, Inc. (2003) 110 Cal.App.4th 1475. Our guide on who is liable in a truck accident works through each party, including the repair shop.

Truck driver hour limits

Hours of service are the caps on how long a commercial driver may drive before rest. A driver in interstate commerce follows the federal rule. A truck driver on an intrastate trip, one that stays inside California, follows the California Highway Patrol's rules in Title 13 of the California Code of Regulations.

The federal column is 49 CFR 395.3. The California column is 13 CCR 1212.5, where the 10 hour cap applies to tank vehicles over 500 gallons hauling flammable liquid. Since January 1, 2024, 13 CCR 1213 has required intrastate carriers to use electronic logging devices, with exceptions such as trucks built before model year 2000.

A second rule binds the company too. 49 CFR 392.3 says no driver shall operate a commercial motor vehicle, and no motor carrier shall require or permit it, while the driver's alertness is so impaired by fatigue or illness as to make it unsafe. A dispatcher who assigns a run the driver cannot legally finish is inside that sentence.

A proven violation changes the shape of the case. Negligence per se means breaking a safety regulation creates a presumption of negligence, and jurors receive it as CACI No. 418. Instead of arguing whether a driver was careful, you show the log, the receipt that contradicts it, and the rule number.

Truck speed and alcohol limits

California adds two limits on top of the federal ones. Vehicle Code section 22406 caps a motortruck or truck tractor with three or more axles, and any vehicle towing another, at 55 miles per hour, along with loaded school buses and vehicles carrying explosives. On a freeway posted at 65, the maximum under Vehicle Code section 22349, that is a 10 mile per hour gap.

Vehicle Code section 23152(d) makes it unlawful to drive a commercial motor vehicle with 0.04 percent or more alcohol by weight in the blood. That is half the limit for everyone else. A driver at 0.05 percent is legal in a sedan and unlawful in a tractor, and a positive post-crash test sits in a file the company keeps for five years.

Available insurance

Policy limits are the most an insurer will pay, and in most injury cases they are the practical ceiling regardless of how badly you were hurt. This is where truck cases and car cases diverge.

The federal floors are the schedule in 49 CFR 387.9, and they apply to for-hire carriers. A private carrier hauling its own non-hazardous goods across state lines has no federal minimum in the regulations. A carrier running trucks over 10,000 pounds on California roads needs a state motor carrier permit and, under Vehicle Code section 34631.5, at least $750,000 in combined single limit coverage, whether it hauls for hire or carries its own goods.

The car minimum is Vehicle Code section 16056, 30/60/15 for policies issued on or after January 1, 2025, rising again in 2035. Side by side, the truck floor is 25 times higher. Coverage can also sit in layers, a primary policy and excess policies above it, and each defendant we identify is another policy.

Fault by crash type

• Underride. A car goes beneath the trailer, which points at conspicuity tape (the reflective tape on the trailer), rear impact guard condition, and whether the trailer was stopped in a travel lane.
• Jackknife. The trailer swings until the rig folds at the coupling, which points at speed for conditions, brake balance, and load distribution.
• Rollover. Usually on a ramp or a curve, which points at speed, center of gravity, and whether the load shifted, and that sends you to the loading records.
• Wide right turn squeeze. The tractor swings left before turning right and traps whatever is beside it, which points at mirror use and route choice.
• No-zone sideswipe. The no-zone is the blind area beside and behind a tractor-trailer, and this pattern points at lane change technique and any side camera.
• Lost load. Cargo leaves the trailer, which points at securement, the loader, and the shipper more often than the driver.
• Tire failure. A tread separation or blowout points at the tire itself, which has to be preserved, and the inspection reports.
• Rear-end into stopped traffic. The common freeway pattern here, which points at following distance, fatigue, and the engine data.

Liability in port and delivery crashes

Los Angeles carries more heavy trucks than almost anywhere for one reason: it is where the containers land. The Port of Los Angeles reports 10,239,318 TEUs (twenty-foot container units) moved in calendar year 2025 on its container statistics page. It also reports 26 consecutive years as the number one container port in the Western Hemisphere on its facts and figures page.

Every container leaves on a chassis behind a truck or on a train. Drayage is the short-haul trucking that moves a container between the terminal and a rail yard or warehouse, and it feeds the 710 north out of San Pedro Bay, then the 5, the 91, and the 605. A drayage case brings its own defendants: the terminal operator, the chassis provider, the trucking company, and the cargo owner. That is port and drayage truck accidents. Truck crashes do not stop at the county line, and for San Bernardino and Riverside counties our Inland Empire truck accident lawyer page covers the region.

The other half is the last mile. Box trucks and sprinter vans work residential streets built for cars, on routes timed by software, and the company on the side of the van is often not the company employing the driver. That structure is the central dispute, covered on delivery truck and last mile accidents. For a rideshare car, start with our Uber accident page.

Vocational and work trucks

Dump trucks, cement mixers, tow trucks, and garbage trucks are built for a job rather than a long haul, and they spend their days on surface streets, at job sites, and at the curb. A motortruck with three or more axles over 10,000 pounds GVWR is regulated by the California Highway Patrol under Vehicle Code section 34500(a). Two hours exceptions fit these trucks. A driver hauling construction materials to an active site within 50 miles may restart the eight-day count after 24 hours off, under 13 CCR 1212(m), and tow truck drivers have their own 12, 16, and 80 hour limits in 1212(q).

Garbage trucks raise a question that changes the deadline: whose truck was it? In the City of Los Angeles, curbside trucks at single-family homes are usually run by LA Sanitation and Environment (LASAN), a City department, so a claim goes to the City within six months under Government Code section 911.2. Businesses and multifamily buildings of five or more units are served through recycLA by private haulers that LASAN's program page names, including Athens Services, Republic Services, and Waste Management. A claim against a private hauler runs on the two-year statute.

A franchise does not let a hauler hand off its responsibility. In Taylor v. Oakland Scavenger Co. (1941) 17 Cal.2d 594, the California Supreme Court held that a garbage company holding a city franchise could not escape liability by handing collection to a contractor whose truck struck a student. Our guide to government and postal vehicle accidents covers the City claim, and box truck accidents covers rental and moving trucks.

Truck case value

Value is built, not looked up. It comes from documented medical bills and future care, wage loss and lost earning capacity, the non-economic harm a jury prices, the number of defendants, and the coverage behind them. The evidence work moves one of those five.

That is our own case. A semi-truck sideswiped our client on the freeway and caused a concussion. The first offer was $100,000. It settled for $6,300,000 on the eve of trial. One case, with its own facts and coverage.

We publish no average truck accident settlement. Published averages have no disclosed dataset behind them. Our case results page lists what we have recovered.

Filing deadlines

Sources: Government Code section 911.2, section 912.4, section 945.6, and Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1. The statute of limitations is the outer deadline to file suit; once it passes the claim is gone.

After you call

1. 1
   The preservation letter goes out first

   To the trucking company, its insurer, the broker, and any telematics vendor, naming the logs, the engine data, the video, and the maintenance file.

2. 2
   We get you treated

   Imaging, the right doctors, and follow-up care, often with nothing out of pocket. Treatment first is what makes the record complete.

3. 3
   The scene and the vehicles

   Photographs of the scene, and a request to inspect and download the tractor before it is repaired or scrapped.

4. 4
   Every defendant, every policy

   The lease, the dispatch records, the bill of lading, and the safety history tell us who else belongs in the case. Each name is another policy.

5. 5
   We handle the recorded statement

   The carrier's investigator will call. You need not speak with them, and we take that contact. The first offer is a negotiating position.

6. 6
   We track the deadline

   Two years, or six months if a public entity is in the file, plus retention periods that end sooner.

An attorney handles the case from the first call through trial, and that attorney is Josh Kohanim. There is no fee unless we recover. General questions are answered on our frequently asked questions page, and the rest is on practice areas.

Exceptions in truck claims

You were the truck driver. Your first claim is workers compensation, a different system with different deadlines and no pain and suffering. A separate claim against a third party may exist alongside it.

Only the freight was damaged. Cargo loss is governed by the bill of lading and federal transportation law, not personal injury law.

The truck minimums do not reach every vehicle. The $750,000 federal floor applies to for-hire interstate trucks of 10,001 pounds or more, and the $750,000 California permit floor to commercial trucks over 10,000 pounds. A contractor's pickup at 10,000 pounds or less that carries only the business's own tools sits outside both and may carry the 30/60/15 car minimum. Then your own underinsured motorist coverage can become the case, which our Los Angeles car accident lawyer page covers.

You were on two wheels or on foot. The trucking rules still apply, but the fault dispute differs enough that we handle those on our motorcycle, bicycle, and pedestrian pages.

Steps after a truck crash

You have two years to sue a private company, and six months to present a claim if a public agency truck was involved. The records that decide who pays are kept on their own schedules: three months for inspection reports and six months for the driver's logs under the federal rules. More than one company may be responsible, and the federal floor for a for-hire interstate truck is $750,000 rather than $30,000.

Get examined, write down the carrier's name and the USDOT number on the door, keep your photographs, and call us. We send the preservation letter and deal with the trucking company from there. If a family member was killed, our wrongful death page explains who may bring the claim. We also handle truck cases in Long Beach, Santa Ana, Orange County, Calabasas, and the Inland Empire.